Fighter

I've had a brilliantly relaxing weekend - drinking wine and playing cards, buying new magazines and DVDs, watching said DVDs and generally hanging out with my friends. I couldn't ask for anything more. Last night when we were playing cards Christina Aguilera's Fighter came on, and reminded me how beautifully creative the video is. I love it, and her! Apparently she's back with a new album in April....

Get the creative juices flowing...

Recently I have had a huge desire to start sketching/painting/collaging again for myself. Working in a creative, albeit corporate environment all day let's me express myself to a certain degree but clean technical drawings and photoshop are not what I grew up loving. I used to spend hours and hours of my childhood sketching and interpreting anything I could find, I would create wonderfully mazes in my school maths book (I had, and still have a mini obsession with geometry and the symmetrical delight of squared paper).

Over Xmas I made myself a beautiful black, suede covered sketchbook (which I should show you in another post). Now comes the time to fill it!! I've been drawn to collage recently, not because of the huge trend for collage in fashion editorials now but purely because of the instant nature of it, and the speed with which you can quickly create an amazing visual, which I will use as a base to start sketching or painting.

Matthew Craven is a mixed media artist who reworks vintage photographs, giving them a new graphic quality.

Maurizio Anzeri is another mixed media artist who works into vintage photographs, but he uses embroidery and string-art techniques to add an eerie dimension to the portraits.

Charlotte Cory is an artist and writer who counts the Queen among her customers! She also has a collaboration with All Saints at the moment on a range of t-shirts baring her prints (if only they had men's versions!). She is also currently exhibiting here in London at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery.

Ermmm.....?

Walter Van Beirendonck AW10-11, via Sonny Photos.

I'm all for humour in fashion - it's taken waaayyy too seriously these days, but I'd feel a bit stupid walking to Tesco with a rhino horn sticking out of my c***!

AQ1

Much love goes out to AQ1! You can pick up their accessories online at Styleserver.de

The Renaissance

Inspired by this haunting photo shoot from Dazed & Confused, I have discovered a new found love for the Renaissance. Most of the clothes in this shoot are from the AW09 D&G collection, but I can feel modern day prints taking a nostalgic nod towards the depths of history in the coming seasons.

I know skulls are everywhere at the moment, in some kind of Gothic revival, but the styling in this image is perfect...from the unfinished paint edges on the blue wall to the silhouette of her coat. Perfection.

I love the irregular pleating in this neck piece - imagine this on a skirt or as a bustle on the back of a waistcoat....oh yes!

To go with all these historical references, think dark embossed leather, gold brocades and Jacquards, heavy decorative laces and oodles of decadence - we've all had enough of the recession, so it's time to dress ourselves out of it! Of course, I couldn't do a post about Renaissance in fashion today without throwing in a few paintings from the time. Ones which I believe would make truly stunning prints, on equally stunning dresses, used hugely blown up and distorted - watch this space!

The archetypal Renaissance artist - Leonardo Da Vinci

Raphael Botticelli

Tilda Swinton desktop background

I'm a huge fan of both Tilda Swinton and ANOTHER MAGAZINE, so when she featured in an amazing shoot in Spring/Summer 2009 I created a quick little desktop background. Now you can have it too ;)

A/W2010/11 Inspirations...

New Year is well and truly underway, and life has returned to some kind of normality for most of us. Work is manically busy at the moment, and I'm currently designing our Autumn/Winter 2010/11 collection ready to present to the buyers come February/March. The only problem being Chinese New Year - starting on the 14th February and lasting a whole month where the factories are closed - I need all my samples back before they start their celebrations otherwise we will have nothing to sell until the end of March! Basically I'm working on flat out between sketching up new ideas, speccing my designs (giving them measurements for the factories), choosing and sourcing new fabrics, deciding which factory would make the best job of each particular design (there are about 30 pieces per story x 4) and finally giving the sample to the relevant factory and doing the necessary paper work....praying that in two or three weeks TNT will deliver a truck load of perfect salesman samples!

I wanted to share with you a few of my inspirations for the work I'm doing at the moment... Extreme fringing, furs and feathers Hoods, snoods and deep cowls - Future Classics SS10 Fabric mixing and distorted silhouettes - Undercover Tribal jersey - Anthony Vaccarello SS10 Embossed leather and brocades, as seen at McQueen AW08 Extreme shoulders and fringing - Todd Lynn SS10 Leather applique - Louise Goldin AW09 Futuristic shapes and armour inspired trousers - Balenciaga SS07 Clean lines and exaggerated shapes - Balenciaga aw08 Cross-over trousers (inspired by Thai fisherman trousers) - Nicole Miller and Yigal Azrouel SS10

I'll be back soon...